In this study of three fundamental concepts of our historical-political world, Horst Günther connects two previously unrelated approaches: that of historical semantics, a philological discipline developed to mastery particularly by the great Romanists Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer within the framework of European literatures, and that of structural linguistics, which is significantly shaped by Roman Jakobson. Horst Günther presents the transformation of concepts using sources from across European modernity. In doing so, he makes the constructive or polemical relationships evident in detail, thereby drawing the reader into the historical debates.